New Jersey Says Clerics Aren't Required to Unite Gay Couples

By TINA KELLEY

Published: January 12, 2007

Allaying the fears of some clergy members, the New Jersey attorney general announced yesterday that the state would not require clerics to unite same-sex couples in civil unions.

In a letter to the state registrar, Joseph A. Komosinski, Attorney General Stuart Rabner wrote that clergy members could decline to perform civil union ceremonies without violating the law, if performing such ceremonies would go against their ''sincerely held religious beliefs.''

Last month, New Jersey became the third state -- after Vermont and Connecticut -- to offer gay couples civil unions. Massachusetts permits gay couples to marry.

New Jersey couples can begin applying for civil union licenses on Feb. 19.

Frank Askin, a professor of constitutional law at Rutgers University, called the policy ''perfectly reasonable'' and drew a parallel to other kinds of marriage.

''You can't make an orthodox rabbi or priest administer an interfaith ceremony,'' he said.

In October, the State Supreme Court ruled that the civil rights of gay couples had been violated because they did not receive the same public benefits as heterosexual couples. But the court left it to the Legislature to create a solution.

Wording in that court decision had worried some clergy members.

In the October opinion, the justices wrote, ''However the Legislature may act, same-sex couples will be free to call their relationships by the name they choose and to sanctify their relationships in religious ceremonies in houses of worship.''

Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, a nonprofit group based in Trenton and Whippany, said the court decision ''was very disconcerting to a number of clergy.''

''We had raised the question among our own networks of pastors, and there were many pastors concerned that they might be put in the situation'' of performing civil unions against their will, he said. ''We're just glad the attorney general had clarified that issue.''

In December, Attorney General Rabner wrote a letter to the registrar outlining the requirements for public officials performing ceremonies.

Mayors, county clerks and judges would be violating the state's Law Against Discrimination if they performed marriages but refused to perform civil unions, he wrote.

Public officials who balk at performing civil union ceremonies because of their individual beliefs must then also refrain from performing marriages, Mr. Rabner wrote. If they perform marriages but refuse to perform civil unions, they could face legal action by the state, including the possibility of fines.

Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay civil rights group, observed that a bill his group supports, calling for marriage equality, specifically states that clerics do not have to perform marriages between gay people if they do not want to.

''This has always been a tenet of the national marriage equality movement,'' he said in a statement.

Ellen Donnelly, the co-pastor of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Wayne, said it has always puzzled her that religious leaders act as agents of the state when they perform marriages.

''To me the European model makes more sense, where all marriage is a civil union and those who wish can have that blessed by the church,'' she said.

While she and her husband, John, the other pastor, will not perform a same-sex union because they believe it would violate church doctrine, she said of yesterday's letter, ''I think it's pretty obvious this is what the separation of church and state is.''